Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing

Customizing Emails to Increase Its Effectiveness

If you want to make a customer out of someone through an email, you’re more likely to garner interest through a personable type of email. This means personalizing it in a way that will appeal to your prospects.

If you are looking for a professional service, eTargetMedia provides creative solutions that will not only drive results but also maximize the potential of your marketing campaign. Creating a campaign that motivates the customer to partake in whatever you are selling should be a goal in mind. Knowing that you have professional services that can provide a solution with little effort on your part is a useful asset.

Figure out your customers’ buyer persona. Factor in things like demographic information, job level, and goals. By doing so, you will have more insight on the type of consumer that you are dealing with which can help you form your marketing strategy.

After a type of persona is created, what you’re going to need is a landing page. This is where all of the data that you collected is going to be put to use. This is where you can alter the page to cater solely to the customer. If they decide to open your email and click on the link, then you’ve successfully caught their interest. Now you need to seal the deal by constructing a page that will give them an opportunity to purchase your service or product.

Your success is determined by the strategies applied to your campaign. By successfully marketing your service through email, you can expect there to be an increase in interested prospects.

 

Internet Marketing

4 Email Marketing Tips for the Holidays

Given that almost 42% of retailers begin their marketing during the holidays, it is a good idea to start thinking about these efforts if you haven’t started already.

Well, there’s a lot of money to be made considering that the average shopper will spend $805 on an average during the holidays. This is almost up by 5% from last year.

Here are 4 email marketing tips for the holidays:

1: Focus on Mobile for Delivery

Retailers have reported 50% more traffic coming from mobile and tablet users. You have no option but to make your email mobile-friendly. For this, keep it short, use web-friendly fonts as well as opt for using a mobile-friendly template.

 

2: Make your subject convincing enough to open

Without a doubt, subject lines will determine whether or not emails are opened. It will also push the reader to take action. Some of the common types of subject used with great effect are the explainer, the question, urgent deadline, holiday connection and even the holiday emoji or symbol.

3: Offer the best deals possible

The holiday season spirit makes it difficult for people to turn down a good deal. Some of the most popular deals include free shipping, product discounts and cash back. Last minute deals might work well for those who procrastinate.

4: Avoid sending too many promotional emails

Don’t send too many promotional emails leading up to the holidays as this will lead to most of them being ignored. However, it is a good idea to send emails that offer tips, guides as well as the proverbial ‘Celebrate the season’ email too.

Internet Marketing

4 Ways to Market Your Product or Service to ‘SloLoMo’ Customers

Today’s customers are defined by three distinct characteristics: their dependence on social media and friends to make purchases, shopping both online and locally and showing an increasing dependence on mobile devices.

In other words, they are known as the “SloLoMo” customer. Here are 4 ways by which you can market your product and service to these customers:

1: Ensure your Business Name, Address and Phone Number is Accurate

Customers rely on this information in order to reach your business. Make sure it stays updated as they will rely on its accuracy. Better still, Google has included NAP as one of its factors for the local search ranking algorithm.

2: Sign up for Google My Business

Google My Business complements your website as it gives your business a public identity apart from being searchable via Google. This will work hand in hand with your website too. In fact, the information that you offer will appear on Google Maps, Search and Plus.

 3: Advertise on Apps Targeted Towards Mobile Users

The Foursquare and Pushlocal apps allows advertisers to push notifications to mobile customers to prospective customers that are in the locality. Another service such as Perch pushes notifications from social media services on to people’s phones based on their location.

4: Reserve Your Listing in Local Business Directories

Directories will only add to your online presence since they can be easily found by search engines. Also, they tend to rank very highly when it comes to local search. This is despite the fact that customers might not visit your listing directly.

Internet Marketing

3 Email Marketing Metrics That Can Help You With Marketing Strategy

Conducting extensive market research might suit large companies with big budget. But this won’t work for small businesses.

Yet there’s a simpler way to find data that you can use: the reporting dashboard in your email marketing system can reveal more.

Here are 3 metrics that can help you decide what to do with the ‘intelligence’ that you obtain:

1: Opens

This metric tells you whether or not your email was read fully and not just previewed. However, what this doesn’t tell you is what he’s going to do next. Apart from this, this ‘open’ metric gauges whether or not the message you sent was of good quality or not. It also serves as the foundation for A/B testing which sends two different messages to see which one got the best response.

 2: Bounces

A bounce means that the email could not be delivered. How this is useful is that it tells which email addresses on your list is valid or not so that you can remove them immediately. If there are too many bounces when you send emails, then it’s time to add a few new contacts to your list while eliminating others. Just remember that sometimes ISPs can penalize you for sending too many emails to nonexistent addresses.

3: Click-throughs

Among all these metrics, the click-throughs are the ones that you have to watch. This is because it holds evidence that the person who received this email actually read it and clicked on a particular call-to-action and to do whatever was requested. What click-through stats tell you is that the reader of the email is paying attention and now wants to know more.

Internet, Internet Marketing, Marketing

When to Send Your Emails

Written by eTargetMedia.

eTargetMedia helps customers with all aspects of their email marketing campaigns — from developing targeted and well-qualified mailing lists to developing creative content. One aspect that many customers struggle with is trying to determine the optimal time for sending their emails to customers. This includes both the time of day and the day in the week that will give their emails the best chance to be opened and read.

Customers are busy and emails can be lost in the shuffle. So when is the best time to send your emails so they are noticed? Mailchimp published research in 2014 which had some surprising results:

Little Differences in Weekdays: Many people think that Mondays are the best day to send out emails since people are motivated for the week. Other people think that Mondays are not good because people are digging out from emails over the weekend. The truth is that optimal send times are fairly evenly distributed from Monday through Thursday.

Some Markets Prefer Weekend Mailings: While weekdays are preferable overall to weekends for mailings, there are some exceptions. Many segments that are retail-oriented are ideal for weekend emails. This can include hobbies, retail and entertainment-focused emails.

Late Mornings and Early Afternoons Are the Best Times for Emails: It’s perhaps not surprising that the time period between late morning and lunch is the best time for sending emails during the weekdays. This is the time when people have cleared their plate of messages and tasks that have piled up but haven’t yet started to “check out” for the day.

eTargetMedia offers creative services and postal/email mailing lists for Fortune 500 companies and small businesses. They can also increase email marketing lists through email appending services.

Internet Marketing

3 Best Practices to Drive Conversion with Email Newsletters

Email newsletters come in handy for small business owners who can convert website visitors into prospective customers.

There are two things that any email newsletter should contain: valuable information about your product or service that engages your audience to the point that they are convinced that your company is the right choice.

Apart from this, here are 3 best practices that can drive conversions with email newsletters:

#1: A Personal Introduction

Customers will always like to know who you are instead of a message from a faceless representative of a business. Write a story of what is going on in your Life which is related to what you want to cover. Also, inform them of what is being covered in the newsletter along with an appropriate call-to-action.

#2: High-Quality Editorial Content

It’s important to remember that articles and essays are an important part of your newsletter, so it’s not a good idea to write something quickly and which isn’t very appealing to your reader. At least, aim for writing one 500-word article which contains helpful tips and information or other high-quality content that your current and prospective customers can use.

You don’t have to write the newsletter content yourself and when necessary, can use blog or article content that you have written already.

#3: Add an Offer

Without a doubt, make sure that you add a strong call-to-action along with an important offer to get your readers (prospective customers) to buy your product or service. In particular, add this section at the end of your newsletter but ensure that it stays in line with the theme of your newsletter. Most of all, ensure that this section is separate to where you’ve added the editorial content so that it doesn’t look like a sales pitch.

advertising, Internet, Internet Marketing, Marketing

Three Common Mistakes When A/B Testing Emails

Written by eTargetMedia.

By now, you are likely aware of the need to perform A/B testing on your email campaigns. Making changes to your emails — whether major or subtle — can have a significant impact on your email’s effectiveness so it’s important to test potential changes and monitor their effectiveness. But in order to get the most out of your A/B testing you need to do it correctly.

Here are three common mistakes which eTargetMedia has found that even experienced digital marketers make when performing A/B testing on their emails:

Drawing Conclusions From Early Results: With email marketing, you can see the results of your A/B testing in real time as recipients open their emails and click through to your site. This is powerful information but it can also be misleading. People who open your emails right away are likely to respond differently than people who take their time. Wait at least 24 hours before doing any serious analysis of your results.

Testing One-Off Emails: If your company has a one-time Valentine’s Day sale, chances are you are going to send an email about it. But you aren’t going to learn a lot that will help your business long-term by testing the Valentine’s Day specific content in that email (such as the size and shape of a heart). Save your A/B testing for elements that can apply to all of your emails.

Altering Too Many Elements: It’s tempting to test multiple elements in one A/B email campaign. The problem is that this makes it impossible to determine which changes led to which results in your testing. You should only change one element at a time during your A/B testing.

eTargetMedia is a leading provider of targeted email and postal mailing lists. The company also provides creative services that can help businesses of all sizes with their digital marketing needs.

Internet Marketing

3 Ways to Convert Facebook Likes to Email Subscribers

No matter what one’s predictions are for Facebook, one thing is for sure: its organic reach figures have literally dropped to single digits.

It is for this reason converting your Facebook likes into email subscribers and this is because they’re of much more worth to you than on Facebook itself.

So, here are 3 ways by which you can convert Facebook likes into email subscribers:

#1: Use Facebook ads

Whether you like it or not, Facebook has become an ‘advertising platform’. No matter whether it is a custom audience, promoted post or any other type of Facebook advertising, it’s good to give it a try. Sometimes you just have to spend a little money and in this case, it is a good investment in your email subscribers.

#2: Gate your content

You can offer a free PDF report as content behind an email gate and that are also known as a “form gate”. Blog content or even coupons could be a part of this list as well. This type of gate does not allow people to see content without providing contact information of theirs.

Before you begin, it’s good to ask yourself as to what type of content your Facebook users would like to see so that they will be willing to give their email address.

#3: Add an email or sign link to your Facebook page

Add an opt-in form to your Facebook page and which will require no coding whatsoever. For this, ensure that you contact your email service provider as they will add an ‘Sign Up’ link in the tab. In fact, setting up this form (or app) will take at least 15 minutes or so.

Internet Marketing

3 Reasons why Organic Reach has Reduced on Facebook

Organic reach on Facebook has been one aspect that has been giving business cause for concern these days.

By definition, organic reach is the number of people that their posts reach every time which has reduced by almost 50 percent.

This statistic, among others, is the cause for business to wonder whether Facebook continues to be a proper marketing channel or not.

That said, here are 3 reasons why organic reach on Facebook has reduced, according to the social media network itself:

#1: More content

The first reason given is that with more and more content being posted every day, this has reached a point where it affects organic reach negatively. Also, posts are being added far more frequently than before while the number of business pages have also increased substantially.

#2: Only display of relevant stories

Facebook now uses an algorithm that tries to show people the most relevant stories based on certain factors – some of which include what comments were made on the story, who posted the story and what type of story it is.

While the social media giant will not give the details of how Google works, it does provide guidance for businesses to deal with these changes effectively.

#3: Not because of paid ads

Facebook has clearly stated that one of the reasons why organic reach hasn’t reduced is because of paid ads. The company goes on to explain that family and friends are the reason why people log into Facebook and not brands themselves. So, the reason why the organic reach has reduced is because they’re competing for the smaller space now dedicated in the News Feed for brands itself.

Internet Marketing

3 Reasons Why You Should Add Videos to Your Emails

According to a study by Experian, click rates improve dramatically as soon as marketers add video content to their emails.

Of course, it has been difficult to set up videos in emails until HTML5 came along.

It’s also been said that almost 60 percent of email users are able to see embedded videos in emails.

For the rest who cannot see them directly, they can see a static or fallback image that will be linked to the video. When clicked, this will lead the reader to a landing page where the video can be played.

Better still, most major email service providers not only offer this service but also help their customers use this feature properly by offering tutorials too.

Apart from this, here are some reasons why adding videos to email might be a good idea:

#1: You don’t like writing very much

Writing is hard. Of course, if you can’t, you have to hire a writer but that will cost money. To avoid all this, all one has to do is create a video with your smartphone and you’re done!

#2: Bring some personality into your business

No matter how well-written an email is, nothing beats a well-presented video by a person. This is for the simple reason that people are attracted to people. For example, just the mere moment of watching you smile while you talk works magic compared to writing an email.

#3: Beat your competition

Only 30 percent of businesses use videos in their emails. In the case of small businesses, that number is even smaller. If you want to gain an edge over your competition, then adding emails in your videos is the way to go.